02/28/2010

Data collection plans and their importance in Kaizen Projects

When your undertaking an improvement project one of the most important things you’ll need to get your hands on is data. Data represents facts about your process and can help you in determining route cause and help model any improvements that you consider.
Given the importance then – an appropriate data collection plan is vital – utilizing poor data can create all sorts of issues – incorrect hypotheses – poor solutions and is some cases resulting in making a bad situation worse!
So what’s a data collection plan? Well it’s pretty simple – it’s the planning of how you’ll get your data to support your project – your Data Collection Plan should include (amongst other things).
1/ What data you’ll need
2/ How you’ll collect it
3/ What format you store it in
4/ Who will collect the data and manage it during your project
It needn’t be difficult but it’s a key step that you’ll need to include in your Business improvement project. For more information check out our article on Data Collection plans